The following standards offer a focus for instruction each year and help ensure that students gain adequate exposure to a range of texts and tasks. Rigor is also infused through the requirement that students read increasingly complex texts through the grades. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades.

Key Ideas and Details

Reading: Literature Standard 1
Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.

Reading: Literature Standard 2
Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text.

Reading: Literature Standard 3
Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events.

Craft and Structure

Reading: Literature Standard 4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.

Reading: Literature Standard 5
Refer to parts of stories, dramas, and poems when writing or speaking about a text, using terms such as chapter, scene, and stanza; describe how each successive part builds on earlier sections.

Reading: Literature Standard 6
Distinguish their own point of view from that of the narrator or those of the characters.

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

Reading: Literature Standard 7
Explain how specific aspects of a text’s illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting).

Reading: Literature Standard 8
(Not applicable to literature)

Reading: Literature Standard 9
Compare and contrast the themes, settings, and plots of stories written by the same author about the same or similar characters (e.g., in books from a series).

Range of Reading and Complexity of Text

Reading: Literature Standard 10
By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poetry, at the high end of the grades 2–3 text complexity band independently and proficiently. Recognize and begin to read documents written in cursive.

Key Ideas and Details

Reading: Informational Text Standard 1
Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.

Reading: Informational Text Standard 2
Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea.

Reading: Informational Text Standard 3
Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.

Craft and Structure

Reading: Informational Text Standard 4
Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 3 topic or subject area.

Reading: Informational Text Standard 6
Distinguish their own point of view from that of the author of a text.

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

Reading: Informational Text Standard 7
Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).

Reading: Informational Text Standard 9
Compare and contrast the most important points and key details presented in two texts on the same topic.

Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

Reading: Informational Text Standard 10
By the end of the year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, at the high end of the grades 2–3 text complexity band independently and proficiently. Recognize and begin to read documents written in cursive.

The reading foundational skills standards are directed toward fostering students’ understanding and working knowledge of concepts of print, the alphabetic principle, and other basic conventions of the English writing system. These foundational skills are not an end in and of themselves; rather, they are necessary and important components of an effective, comprehensive reading program designed to develop proficient readers with the capacity to comprehend texts across a range of types and disciplines. Instruction should be differentiated: good readers will need much less practice with these concepts than struggling readers will. The point is to teach students what they need to learn and not what they already know—to discern when particular children or activities warrant more or less attention.

The following writing standards offer a focus for instruction each year to help ensure that students gain adequate mastery of a range of skills and applications. Each year in their writing, students should demonstrate increasing sophistication in all aspects of language use, from vocabulary and syntax to the development and organization of ideas, and they should address increasingly demanding content and sources. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades. The expected growth in student writing ability is reflected both in the standards themselves and in the collection of annotated student writing samples in Appendix C.

Text Types and Purposes

Writing Standard 1
Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons.

a.
Introduce the topic or text they are writing about, state an opinion, and create an organizational structure that lists reasons.

b.
Use dialogue and descriptions of actions, thoughts, and feelings to develop experiences and events or show the response of characters to situations.

c.
Use temporal words and phrases to signal event order.

d.
Provide a sense of closure.

Production and Distribution of Writing

Writing Standard 4
With guidance and support from adults, produce writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task and purpose. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

Writing Standard 5
With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, and editing.

Writing Standard 6
With guidance and support from adults, use technology to produce and publish writing (using keyboarding skills) as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

Research to Build and Present Knowledge

Writing Standard 7
Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic.

Writing Standard 8
Recall information from experiences or gather information from print and digital sources; take brief notes on sources and sort evidence into provided categories.

Writing Standard 9
(Begins in grade 4)

Range of Writing

Writing Standard 10
Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

The following Speaking and Listening standards offer a focus for instruction each year to help ensure that students gain adequate mastery of a range of skills and applications. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades.

Comprehension and Collaboration

Speaking and Listening Standard 1
Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

a.
Come to discussions prepared, having read or studied required material; explicitly draw on that preparation and other information known about the topic to explore ideas under discussion.

b.
Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., gaining the floor in respectful ways, listening to others with care, speaking one at a time about the topics and texts under discussion).

c.
Ask questions to check understanding of information presented, stay on topic, and link their comments to the remarks of others.

d.
Explain their own ideas and understanding in light of the discussion.

Speaking and Listening Standard 2
Determine the main ideas and supporting details of a text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

Speaking and Listening Standard 3
Ask and answer questions about information from a speaker, offering appropriate elaboration and detail. Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas

Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas

Speaking and Listening Standard 4
Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.

The following Language standards offer a focus for instruction each year to help ensure that students gain adequate mastery of a range of skills and applications. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades. Beginning in grade 3, skills and understandings that are particularly likely to require continued attention in higher grades as they are applied to increasingly sophisticated writing and speaking are marked with an asterisk (*).

Conventions of Standard English

Language Standard 1
Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

a.
Distinguish the literal and nonliteral meanings of words and phrases in context (e.g., take steps).

b.
Identify real-life connections between words and their use (e.g., describe people who are friendly or helpful).

c.
Distinguish shades of meaning among related words that describe states of mind or degrees of certainty (e.g., knew, believed, suspected, heard, wondered).

Language Standard 6
Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate conversational, general academic, and domain-specific words and phrases, including those that signal spatial and temporal relationships (e.g., After dinner that night we went looking for them).

Beginning in grade 3, skills and understandings that are particularly likely to require continued attention in higher grades as they are applied to increasingly sophisticated writing and speaking are marked with an asterisk (*).